The Liberation Of Our Human Nature

8:1-4 There is, therefore, now no condemnation against those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law which comes from the Spirit and leads to life has in Christ Jesus set me free from the law which begets sin and leads to death. As for the impotency of the law, that weakness of the law which resulted from the effects of our sinful human nature--God sent his own Son as a sin offering with that very same human nature which in us had sinned; and thereby, while he existed in the same human nature as we have, he condemned sin, so that as a result the righteous demand of the law might be fulfilled in us, who live our lives not after the principle of sinful human nature, but after the principle of the Spirit.

This is a very difficult passage because it is so highly compressed, and because, all through it, Paul is making allusions to things which he has already said.

Two words keep occurring again and again in this chapter, flesh (sarx, Greek #4561 ) and spirit (pneuma, Greek #4151 ). We will not understand the passage at all unless we understand the way in which Paul is using these words.

(i) Sarx ( Greek #4561 ) literally means flesh. The most cursory reading of Paul's letters will show how often he uses the word, and how he uses it in a sense that is all his own. Broadly speaking, he uses it in three different ways.

(a) He uses it quite literally. He speaks of physical circumcision, literally "in the flesh" ( Romans 2:28 ). (b) Over and over again he uses the phrase kata ( Greek #2596 ) sarka ( Greek #4561 ), literally according to the flesh, which most often means looking at things from the human point of view. For instance, he says that Abraham is our forefather kata ( Greek #2596 ) sarka ( Greek #4561 ), from the human point of view. He says that Jesus is the son of David kata ( Greek #2596 ) sarka ( Greek #4561 ) ( Romans 1:3 ), that is to say, on the human side of his descent. He speaks of the Jews being his kinsmen kata ( Greek #2596 ) sarka ( Greek #4561 ) ( Romans 9:3 ), that is to say, speaking of human relationships. When Paul uses the phrase kata ( Greek #2596 ) sarka ( Greek #4561 ), it always implies that he is looking at things from the human point of view.

(c) But he has a use of this word sarx ( Greek #4561 ) which is all his own. When he is talking of the Christians, he talks of the days when we were in the flesh (en ( Greek #1722 ) sarki, Greek #4561 ) ( Romans 7:5 ). He speaks of those who walk according to the flesh in contradistinction to those who live the Christian life ( Romans 8:4-5 ). He says that those who are in the flesh cannot please God ( Romans 8:8 ). He says that the mind of the flesh is death, and that it is hostile to God ( Romans 8:6 ; Romans 8:8 ). He talks about living according to the flesh ( Romans 8:12 ). He says to his Christian friends, "You are not in the flesh" ( Romans 8:9 ).

It is quite clear, especially from the last instance, that Paul is not using flesh simply in the sense of the body, as we say flesh and blood. How, then, is he using it? He really means human nature in all its weakness and he means human in its vulnerability to sin. He means that part of man which gives sin its bridgehead. He means sinful human nature, apart from Christ, everything that attaches a man to the world instead of to God. To live according to the flesh is to live a life dominated by the dictates and desires of sinful human nature instead of a life dominated by the dictates and the love of God. The flesh is the lower side of man's nature.

It is to be carefully noted that when Paul thinks of the kind of life that a man dominated by the sarx ( Greek #4561 ) lives he is not by any means thinking exclusively of sexual and bodily sins. When he gives a list of the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:19-21 , he includes the bodily and the sexual sins; but he also includes idolatry, hatred, wrath, strife, heresies, envy, murder. The flesh to him was not a physical thing but spiritual. It was human nature in all its sin and weakness; it was all that man is without God and without Christ.

(ii) There is the word Spirit; in Romans 8:1-39 it occurs no fewer than twenty times. This word has a very definite Old Testament background. In Hebrew it is ruach ( Hebrew #7307 ), and it has two basic thoughts. (a) It is not only the word for Spirit; it is also the word for wind. It has always the idea of power about it, power as of a mighty rushing wind. (b) In the Old Testament, it always has the idea of something that is more than human. Spirit, to Paul, represented a power which was divine.

So Paul says in this passage that there was a time when the Christian was at the mercy of his own sinful human nature. In that state the law simply became something that moved him to sin and he went from bad to worse, a defeated and frustrated man. But, when he became a Christian, into his life there came the surging power of the Spirit of God, and, as a result, he entered into victorious living.

In the second part of the passage Paul speaks of the effect of the work of Jesus on us. It is complicated and difficult, but what Paul is getting at is this. Let us remember that he began all this by saying that every man sinned in Adam. We saw how the Jewish conception of solidarity made it possible for him to argue that, quite literally, all men were involved in Adam's sin and in its consequence--death. But there is another side to this picture. Into this world came Jesus; with a completely human nature; and he brought to God a life of perfect obedience, of perfect fulfilment of God's law. Now, because Jesus was fully a man, just as we were one with Adam, we are now one with him; and, just as we were involved in Adam's sin, we are now involved in Jesus' perfection. In him mankind brought to God the perfect obedience, just as in Adam mankind brought to God the fatal disobedience. Men are saved because they were once involved in Adam's sin but are now involved in Jesus' goodness. That is Paul's argument, and, to him and to those who heard it, it was completely convincing, however hard it is for us to grasp it. Because of what Jesus did, there opens out to the Christian a life no longer dominated by the flesh but by that Spirit of God, which fills a man with a power not his own. The penalty of the past is removed and strength for his future is assured.